The Best of Men (59 page)

“I would not know.” Falkland bowed, doffing his hat. “Now, please excuse me, my lord.”

“Silly little man, what you call caution is merely your own cowardice,” Pembroke muttered to himself, watching Falkland cross the quadrangle, head bowed, his cloak flapping in the early February breeze.

Pembroke turned back towards the hall, still smarting from Falkland’s almost hostile prevarications, when it struck him: what if they were based on reliable intelligence? Could Radcliff have betrayed him to the Secretary of State?

It was midnight when Radcliff arrived at the meeting place, near an abandoned windmill some miles northwest of Oxford. Pembroke’s coach was waiting for him, light flickering in its windows. He must not show his trepidation, he reminded himself, as he dismounted and looped his horse’s bridle over the branch of a nearby tree.

“Please, sir, get in,” he heard Pembroke say, and he obeyed, immediately reassured by his lordship’s smile and the timbre of his voice. “How is that arm of yours? Fully healed?”

“Yes, my lord,” Radcliff said, relief washing over him. Just as Poole had informed him, Pembroke was not angry at all. “What news of the negotiations?”

“I fear that His Majesty is, as ever, intransigent, if not contemptuous of our proposals. And I had no opportunity for a private audience with him, as I had hoped, before we laid them before him. Sometimes I tire of striving, the future of this kingdom weighs so heavily upon my shoulders,” Pembroke sighed. “Had I not been forced to assume such a burden, I would have stayed quietly at Wilton, completing the additions to my house and garden, and enriching my collection of art.” Radcliff did not interrupt, enjoying the warmth of the coach and Pembroke’s air of confiding in him, as in old times; Poole’s visit to Newbury had alarmed him for nothing. “Have
you
any interest in art, Sir Bernard?” Pembroke asked, in the same friendly manner.

“Interest, yes, but I’m not the expert you are, my lord,” Radcliff said, adding ruminatively, “I’d like to have a portrait done of my wife some day.”

“Yes, you should, before age and childbirth take their toll. Do you know of any talented artist who might execute it?”

“For that, I would defer to your lordship’s recommendation,” Radcliff answered, settling back on the padded seat; he had not found Pembroke so amicable since his departure for The Hague with the ill-fated purse full of gold.

Pembroke regarded him more closely. “There are many new masters emerging from the Dutch school. Their services can be bought quite cheap, or so I gather.” Radcliff nodded, hearing a change in Pembroke’s speech: it had become deliberate, even expectant. “Are you acquainted with any of them?”

“No, my lord. I should be grateful for an introduction – though of course you must have far more pressing concerns at the moment.”

Pembroke continued to survey Radcliff, in the dancing flame of
the lamp that hung from the ceiling of his coach. “In truth, I do,” he said finally. “Sir Bernard, I have spoken with John Earle, and I swear, it is as if he has been warned off me. I had asked him if he would again act as my spiritual counsellor, as he once was, but he claimed that his duties as tutor to the Prince of Wales made it impossible for him to do as I asked.” How sensible of him, thought Radcliff; who could rescue a soul as proud and greedy as Pembroke’s? “It was evident that he considers his friendship with me over,” Pembroke went on. “We have thus lost a vital thread in our scheme: without Earle’s confidence, it will be far more difficult for me to win that of the young Prince.”

“And my Lord Falkland?”

“He is yet more off-putting. I did wonder why. But then I got wind of a rumour that he may have been in clandestine talks with some members of Parliament, against the King’s wishes. Perhaps that is the cause of his wariness towards me: he may fear for his reputation,” he concluded, boring into Radcliff with his small, greyish eyes.

“Perhaps,” Radcliff agreed uneasily, wishing that Pembroke would spit out what was on his mind.

“Has any detail of our plans for His Majesty
ever
leaked out to
anyone
?” Pembroke barked, startling him.

“Certainly not, that I am aware of!”

“What about our code? Apart from you and I, does anyone else have knowledge of it?”

“No, my lord. For that reason I was most puzzled when Poole told me that I should desist from using it for our correspondence.”

“I shall tell you the reason. In November past, a message was delivered to my London house,
in our code
, though the author is still a mystery to me.”

Radcliff allowed himself to look as aghast as he felt. This had to be Beaumont’s doing, but how in heaven’s name had he learnt that Pembroke was involved in the conspiracy? Had Seward used his occult
skills to divine the truth? “That is – incredible,” Radcliff stammered. “What was the substance of it?”

Pembroke hesitated once more, his thin lips working. “That there is a traitor in our midst,” he said, at length.

“Do you think – oh, no, my lord!”

“Then who? Joshua Poole? Tyler?”

“Neither was privy to the code! And Tyler could barely read or write!”

“So we come full circle, back to you,” said Pembroke, with deadly logic. “If you cannot find out where the leak occurred and how far it has spread, and demonstrate to me that it is
stopped permanently
, I shall have no choice but to end our association.” He took a quick, furious breath. “Have you forgotten what you owe me? I have supplied you with money, protected your estate, given you jewels for your wife! But thanks to your blunder in The Hague, I have no store of arms for my own security. And that ham-fisted bully you hired got himself killed in a drunken squabble, Poole told me. Now your precious, unbreakable code has somehow been cracked. Christ’s blood! What will go amiss next? All that you seem to do well is to cast horoscopes!”

“My lord,” Radcliff protested, “I am fully conscious of my debt to you. I have put complete faith in you, and I assure you, I am staking my all on your success. If you fail, I am undone. You must know that.”

“Then you had better move fast on my instructions, or else I shall find myself another stargazer,” Pembroke retorted acidly. “And with Tyler dead, we must secure a new man to dispatch our prey.”

“I promise I shall do as you ask,” Radcliff assured him. “I shall replace Tyler.”

“No. Leave that to me. And no more promises. I want results.”

“How should we communicate, from here on?”

“Use the lawyer, if you must. Good night,” said Pembroke, pushing open the coach door with a violent jerk of his foot.

“Good night, my lord.”

Radcliff descended from the coach and managed to bow before Pembroke slammed the door and yelled at the driver to whip up the horses. At this instant, he hated Pembroke; and he thought of the letters secreted away in Madam Musgrave’s house, most of them in Pembroke’s characteristic, forceful script.

“It was a fine fight in and about Cirencester, and when the town fell we took twelve hundred prisoners,” Tom wrote to his father, in the dim glow of a tallow candle. “They are now being marched back to Oxford, and I regret that I shall not see the Commissioners’ long faces as they arrive. My troop did me credit, no one killed and only a couple lightly wounded. If Gloucester had also fallen to the Prince, we would have had the whole county secured. Yet His Majesty can now safely communicate with his forces in the southwest, and halt the supply of wool to London. Prince Rupert has two thousand head of horse. He has been promised four thousand pounds a month, and a regiment of foot to keep Gloucestershire for the King.”

“Master Thomas,” Adam called, from outside Tom’s tent. “There’s a messenger come to take you to His Highness Prince Rupert.”

“Just a moment,” Tom shouted back, excited, as he dashed off: “I send this by Adam, praying to God you are all in good health, my dear wife especially.” Before leaving with the messenger, he gave Adam instructions to take his letter and ride the short distance to Chipping Campden that same night.

The Royalist regiments were camped mostly in the open Gloucestershire fields, still scattered with patches of snow. Tom shivered as he walked the half mile to Prince Rupert’s accommodations, and when he entered, his damp cloak began to steam immediately in the welcome heat. Surrounded by their chief officers, the Prince,
Wilmot, and Digby were all at supper together, and Tom’s mouth watered as he smelt the roast wildfowl and freshly baked bread on the table before them.

“Mr. Beaumont,” the Prince said, in his direct fashion, setting down his knife, “your men fought well today. You must visit my quarter master, on your way out, and he will issue a barrel of ale and extra rations for your troop. It’s a cold night out there, and hunger makes a man even colder.”

“I thank you, Your Highness, on their behalf,” Tom said, very pleased, and a little sorry that he had been unable to include the Prince’s words in his letter.

The Prince motioned to one of his officers, who filled a tankard of ale and handed it to Tom. As he drank, he could see both Wilmot and Digby eyeing him.

“Have you heard lately from your brother, sir?” Wilmot asked him, when he had finished.

“No, sir. I last saw him at Christmastide, at my father’s house. I thought he was in your service.”

“He must not have been allowed pen and paper, in his gaol cell,” Lord Digby remarked to Wilmot.

Confused, Tom looked from them to the Prince, who said to him, “Did you not know of his arrest?”

“No, Your Highness!”

“My dear fellow,” Digby said, “how peculiar, and how appalling, that you should have been kept in ignorance.”

“Your brother was detained in Oxford Castle at the end of December, on suspicion of colluding with the rebels,” the Prince explained.

Dumbfounded, Tom could not respond at once. “Oh – but that is – is impossible, Your Highness! There must be some mistake,” he added, thinking of his private report to Colonel Hoare; he had not suggested anything so grave as this.

“An
egregious
mistake,” stressed Digby.

“But you may comfort yourself that he has recently been freed,” said the Prince. “One of my captains has evidence that he was falsely accused.”

“I – that is, my family and I are most obliged that Your Royal Highness should condescend to pay attention to my – my brother’s case,” stuttered Tom.

“It is not just his case. Are you acquainted with Colonel Hoare?”

“I am, Your Highness.”

“It was he who took your brother into custody and treated him with unwarranted violence, beating him almost to death and killing another man imprisoned there. I have yet to find out why he did them such a wrong. Thus far Colonel Hoare’s reputation has always been unimpeachable.”

“Ah, well, we can all be impeached,” Digby observed languidly. “I have been impeached by Parliament, though I confess I tend to consider it as more of a compliment than an injury to
my
reputation.”

He and Wilmot started to laugh but were silenced by the Prince’s frown.

“Mr. Beaumont,” Wilmot said in his sneering way, “was it not Colonel Hoare who ordered your troop to be transferred from my regiment to that of His Royal Highness just before we gave battle at Edgehill? I think you told me so yourself.”

“Yes, sir, though I did not ask him for the transfer.”

“Yet you must know him as more than an acquaintance.”

“Not much more, sir,” Tom said, shrinking inside.

“What difference does it make whose regiment he fights in, as long as the war is won,” Prince Rupert put in brusquely. “Good night, Mr. Beaumont, and for your men’s sakes don’t forget to stop with my quartermaster.”

Tom bowed again and tried to make a dignified exit, although he felt as if his heart were stuck in his throat.

L
aurence was still slipping in and out of consciousness. Even under the influence of opium, it hurt simply to breathe, and whenever he coughed, he felt as if his rib cage were about to burst apart. Most worrying of all, he had suffered internal injuries; for days, there was blood in his urine. When not drugged, he wished he were dead. Sometimes when drugged, he did not really care if he lived. Once his fever abated, he found himself repulsed by the wreck that his body had become, and humiliated that he needed help with the most basic functions. Unable to bear the thought of his father seeing him as he was, he forbade Seward to write to Lord Beaumont about what he had suffered. Instead, he dictated a message explaining that his arrest had been an error and that he was now out of gaol, but was presently recovering from an illness he had caught there.

When he told Seward about the planned uprising in London, his old tutor dismissed the possibility that Falkland might have a hand in it. “I want to know the truth,” Laurence insisted, though Seward declared him still too unwell for a meeting with Falkland, or for any other visitors.

After lying in bed for five interminable weeks, however, he lost patience. Defying Seward’s orders he got up to hobble around, which
aggravated his cough, cracking open a rib again. “
Festina lente
,” warned Seward, “or you could suffer a serious relapse. But I shall send word to Falkland that you are ready to give your deposition.”

On the last day of February, as he brought Laurence’s nightly dose of opium tincture, he announced that Falkland would arrive in the morning with his lawyers. “If you think yourself so much better, you must stop taking opium soon, my boy,” he remarked. “It is very addictive.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, you know I can’t cope without it,” Laurence said, determined not to lose his only relief from pain. “Seward, why hasn’t Isabella Savage come to see me?”

“Do you expect
me
to understand the vagaries of women? Now sleep, Beaumont. You will need all your energies for tomorrow.”

Laurence shut his eyes, waiting for the blissful moment when the drug would begin to seep into his bloodstream and he could enjoy its transient oblivion. He felt stifled, as though some invisible creature were pressing the air from his lungs and constricting his throat, and with each inhalation he fancied that he could smell the reek of the jakes on his skin. Yet he must have slept, for he dreamt.